All posts tagged Newt Gingrich

Mark Levin slams Romney for savaging Newt yet pulling back against Obama with Rev. Wright

by Admin on May 17, 2012 in Mark Levin, Mitt Romney with 1 Comment

Posted by The Right Scoop The Right Scoop

Levin is livid over the fact that Romney repudiated anything to do with bringing up Rev. Wright in this campaign even though in the primaries he went full throttle against Newt Gingrich, even with false attack ads:

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Tancredo on Kudlow: “Barrack Obama most left winged candidate we have ever had”

by Admin on February 29, 2012 in Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Tom Tancredo with No comments

Begins at 6:45 mark.

Transcript: first up, it’s just under an hour before polls close in michigan, arizona later. cnbc’s john harwood joins us live from detroit. good evening, john? reporter: larry, there are some polls that will be open until 9:00 in michigan, as well so we’ll have to wait a bit for those results, but we already know this is a very, very close race in michigan. pretty high stakes for the norm nation. my take is that mitt romney wins michigan in arizona he’ll be the nominee, and i think he’ll be the nominee even if he loses michigan, but it will take longer and much rougher. both went after each other by name and mitt romney singling out rick santorum. mitt romney said he’s late to that party. i’m glad he ridiculoecognize is a campaign about the economy. it’s time for him to focus on the economy and for you to all say okay, if the economy is going to be the issue we focus who has the experience to actually get this economy going again? senator santorum is a nice guy, but he’s never had a job in the private sector. but, of course, rick santorum makes the argument that it’s not only about economic issues. social issues especially those conservative christians in the western and northern parts of this state are key targets for him and so he makes a much broader, tack on mitt romney for his health care plan and imp implications for social issues. it’s about government control of economic lives and regulating you, taxing you, forcing you to buy things and forcing their values on you and your religion. which, by the way, romney did to catholic hospitals in massachusetts by forcing them to distribute the morning-after pill. why would we give those issues away in this general election? at the core of what’s at stake in this country, why would we put someone out there who is uniquely unqualified to make that case? so we’ve still got a turnout operation going on. mitt romney, larry, is at the superior organization here as in other states and what rick santorum hopes is that some of those inflammatory comments he’s made may comp state by stirring up some of those conserve tich christians, evangelicals or tvangelicals. many that cross over from the tea party. thanks for this. now let’s turn to republican senior strategist steve schmitt. he was top dog in the mccain campaign in 2008. steve, welcome back to the show. you’re welcome, larry. i want to ask you about president obama a minute. president obama talking to the uaw says this, my bailouts of the car business saved detroit, saved michigan and saved the economy and steve, we are getting better consumer confidence and we are getting better jobs. the dow is over 13,000. let me just ask you, can obama really be beaten in a better economy? well, larry, it’s a closely-divided nation. it continues to be, this has been a terrible stretch for the republican candidates and a lot of good things are happening for the president and the real clear politics average has him up about five points over mitt romney and six points over rec santorum. it’s a close election, but boy do republicans have some work to do. we are talking about things that are irrelevant to the lives of average americans. we are ceding economic arguments to the president talking about 52-year-old speech that president kennedy did in houston and talking about contraception, making from senator santorum’s perspective and i think ludicrous charges about the president wanting people to go to college so they can be indoctrinated and so republicans will have to offer to win this election a pro-growth opportunity message that explains and defines what opportunity looks like to the american people in the 21st century. we need an update in a modern, conservative argument. steve, did mitt romney get that done. that’s still obama’s area of vulnerability and i presume the budget deficit and the debt also. no doubt. did mitt romney get that done in his economics club of detroit’s speech. was he able to sell it and will he be able to sell it? no, i don’t think he got it done and i don’t think he’ll be able to make the pivot until he gets into a general election contact. the season has been disappointing for a lot of reason, but i think it’s on the course that it is right now. we’ve not yet had the candidates looking over the horizon, explaining to the american people what a 21st-century vision of conservatism is. how do you create prosperity? how do you create opportunity. how do you resuscitate the manufacturing base in the country? you know, this race has been about small things and it’s been about personal attacks and one of the consequences of it, larry is we have a fractured conservative base in the republican party, but independents who had soured on the president just a few months ago are going back to them and they’re going back to them in a big way. so we’re going to be starting this general election whoever the nominee is in a pretty good sized hole of our own making. steve, extremism in the culture war doesn’t sound like a winning issue to me. is that going to play a role tonight. did santorum lose the lkt lkt ability argument because he’s gone too far on contraception, on prenatal care, on the jfk speech on four-year colleges and so forth. will that hurt santorum tonight? well, it should hurt santorum if republican voters are focused on beating president bush. let’s look at one state, larry, virginia. republicans have to win back virginia. northern virginia is a moderate swing state area. there is no market for these issues in the american electorate that rick santorum is talking about. this is the antithesis of limited government conservatism. i believe it was a mistake for the congress to intervene in a family court decision in florida with the terry schiavo deci with the terry schiavo decision, but you now see rick santorum out there on a daily basis talking about these issues which are mainstreaming schiavoism into all manner of different areas in the party and then he spent a paragraph or two paragraphs or three paragraphs explaining and that’s a recipe for disaster? apparently he reneged on the jfk thing so he’s coming and going. absolutely. you were great to give us your time tonight. i know you’re busy. thank you ever so much. thank you, larry. let’s bring in two more experts to make the case for romney and santorum. we have gop chairman and current romney backer saul onassis and former colorado republican congressman tom tancredo. tom tancredo, you heard steve schmitt. he had harsh words for your man and saying this was is the antithesis of limited government conservatism on jfk and contraception. what is your response to what steve schmitt said. most of the stuff will not be relevant come the general election. what both of those candidates are trying to do today, what four of them are trying to do and the two really and truly at the top of the heap are trying to win a primary and in the a primary election and in the republican primary you’re going to talk to conservatives and you’ll be more conservative than you would otherwise be. we’ve seen that happen a hundred times. in this case i think santorum really is the conservative and mitt romney is trying to be because you’re going after republican primary voters. after the primary’s over with we enter into a brand new phase, but let’s talk about the issue that came up in terms of the economy. i am concerned. i think we all should be that bill clinton’s admonition to his campaign, remember, it’s the economy, stupid. the economy’s being looking better. if it looks better, that’s right — it’s even — romney loses his main issue, right? that’s his thing. if the economy is better than you’ll fight it out over ideas. saul, let me ask you. steve schmitt did not think that mitt romney got the job done with the 20% tax cut and his overall economic plan to the detroit economics club, and i presume that that’s one of the reasons this race is too close to call, saul. what’s your take on that criticism? well, look, first of all, mitt romney’s argument is going over well in michigan. i’m cautiously optimist take he’s going win tonight. i think he’s doing extremely well in the messaging. i’ve been traveling around the state and yesterday i was listening to his pitch. they want to make sure we have jobs and we have a lot of midwestern states that are hurting economically. tom tancredo, democrats may be very important to this race today. michael moore is out on the tape some place saying all his friends are going vote for santorum because he’s the weaker candidate and they want to cause mischief. what about the democrat turnout, tom? how will that impact things? i don’t know. i understand that’s an interesting thing because i know the democratic party has done a robocall for that purpose to encourage people to vote for santorum and santorum has done a robocall to democrats asking them to vote for him. so one of the two — i mean, the democrats are hoping that if santorum is the weaker candidate, but i’m telling you you better be careful what you ask for, democrats. here’s the thing, honest to goodness, here’s what gives santorum an edge and perhaps in a different election with a different candidate or incumbent things would be different. against a clinton, probably santorum would not have much of a chance. this is not a bill clinton. this is barack obama. he is the most left-wing candidate that — i mean, candidate for re-election we have ever had. you don’t have a right wing candidate against a moderate and i’ll tell you, barack obama is far more left wing than santorum is right wing and when you get those two together america votes, i think — more to the right. i understand, but saul, i’ll give you the last word. basically, do you believe that mitt romney’s economic growth message, not only the 20% tax cut, but reforming entitlements, slashing spending, getting deficits and debt down, do you think that trumps the extreme culture war and is the best way to beat obama? that seems to be the issue this evening. absolutely. i think when mitt romney is talking about the economy and he’s talking about jobs he’s winning. when rick santorum has to bring in democrats, and labor to vote in his favor, republicans all over the country i think will reject santorum’s campaign tactics here. this is about the economy. if we focus barack obama and his message, if we can focus on the economy, gas prices, unemployment mitt romney’s going to win. i think that rick santorum is basically doing a disservice to the party right now. i think that he’s being a little bit hypocritical being the washington insider and trying to run as an outsider. if you want to draw contrast between obama and a republican candidate, mitt romney is coming from the outside and run a business and can run a state and make a difference. saul, thank you very much. tom tancredo, thank you again. coming up on kudlow, eric cantor reveals his jobs act to jump-start small business start-ups. next up, live and exclusive, turns out obama may agree with cantor. free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity. i think it’s a pretty good campaign message, too, on kudlow, we’ll issue right back.

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Free Speech for Conservatives

by Admin on February 21, 2012 in Media Bias, Media Corruption, Soros with No comments

By: Cliff Kincaid Accuracy in Media

 

 

Patrick J. Buchanan, who has been a major figure in the conservative movement for over 40 years, was fired from MSNBC after the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) concluded in Washington, D.C. Buchanan was not a featured speaker at CPAC, but his former colleague, Joe Scarborough, was. Scarborough, the co-host of a little-watched MSNBC program “Morning Joe,” is a former Republican congressman who pleases the liberals by making sure he doesn’t sound too conservative on the air. He takes shots at conservatives to make himself palatable to the left.

Many were astounded that Scarborough was the emcee of a major CPAC event. Scarborough’s real mission was to introduce Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin at a banquet sponsored by Newsmax but he couldn’t resist taking shots at GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, such as saying something about a moon base, one of Gingrich’s more controversial proposals. Gingrich, of course, wasn’t there to defend himself; he spoke to this CPAC on another occasion. Conservatives at my table agreed that Scarborough’s cheap shots at Gingrich were in bad taste. I felt bad for Ryan being introduced in such a tawdry manner.

In order to rub salt in the wounds, Scarborough brought along his liberal MSNBC sidekick Mika Brzezinski, who sat at one of the up-front banquet tables. She posed for pictures with a number of young conservatives who must have thought she was a Hollywood starlet of some kind. For his part, Scarborough has posted photos of himself at CPAC, under the title, “Morning Joe Invades CPAC.” The use of the term “invasion” is the correct one. They invaded the conservative space.

All of this is background information for what has happened to Buchanan and his place in the conservative movement. It’s bad enough that he was fired from MSNBC. In fact, he had been “suspended” weeks before the firing became official. While Buchanan’s magazine The American Conservative was at CPAC, Buchanan was not.

Buchanan seems to be considered anathema by some newcomers to the conservative movement, mostly because of his criticism of America’s foreign wars and pro-Israel foreign policy under George W. Bush. One can criticize those stands and his occasional use of inappropriate language on sensitive issues while acknowledging Buchanan’s stature and place in the conservative movement.

An editorial writer at a young age who was trained in journalism, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of U.S. politics. He has written a number of books, some more controversial than others, as a look at the top of his website will attest. He crossed into government service by working for Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and later ran for president himself. At Reagan’s service, Buchanan was a fierce advocate for freedom against communism.

I first met Buchanan while working for Accuracy in Media. AIM founder Reed Irvine admired and respected Buchanan. This was the norm among conservatives who recognized Buchanan as a fighter against liberals in the media and elsewhere. Buchanan asked me to write an article for his newsletter, “Patrick J. Buchanan From the Right,” about the rise of conservative talk radio. I had hosted a radio show in the early 1990s.

While Buchanan was in the Reagan White House as communications director in the 1980s, I had the opportunity to fill in as the conservative co-host of a then-popular CNN program, “Crossfire.” Buchanan had been the conservative co-host and Tom Braden was the liberal co-host. The “crossfire” aspect also included the fact that there were conservative and liberal guests who sat in the middle, getting questions from both sides. I joked that the slogan of the program was, “Don’t talk while I’m interrupting.” I got into trouble with the producers when I asked the Ambassador from Libya to “please shut up” after he insisted at length that Libya was not involved in international terrorism. Nevertheless, the show had a lot of educational value and was great fun. It was advocacy journalism at its best.

The days of “Crossfire” are gone. The show was cancelled and a true “crossfire” on the issues is not permitted any more by some important media organizations which cower in fear when attacked by the left. It is significant that Buchanan has been forced off the air essentially by the same left-wing forces that previously claimed the scalp of Glenn Beck, who departed from Fox News because of his scrutiny of anti-American hedge fund billionaire George Soros. In both cases, the Soros-funded Media Matters and the Van Jones-founded Color of Change played roles in their ouster.

On his Politico blog, Scarborough issued a joint statement with Brzezinski: “Everyone at Morning Joe considers Pat Buchanan to be a friend and a member of the family. Even though we strongly disagree with the contents of Pat’s latest book, Mika and I believe those differences should have been debated in public. An open dialogue with Morning Joe regulars like Al Sharpton and Harold Ford, Jr. could have developed into an important debate on the future of race relations in America. Because we believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant, Mika and I strongly disagree with this outcome. We understand that the parting was amicable. Still, we will miss Pat.”

Amicable? I see no evidence of that. Buchanan told Sean Hannity on his Fox News program that he had been the victim of an un-American blacklisting for his views on racial matters, as expressed in his new book, Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?

It is significant that black agitator Al Sharpton, who made false racial allegations against white police officers in the notorious Tawana Brawley case, continues on the air on MSNBC while Buchanan has been let go. This has everything to do with the fact that Sharpton, a “Morning Joe” regular, is a loyal stooge of Obama and a faithful Democrat. It seems he will remain a member of the MSNBC “family” no matter what he says or does.

But to speak up for the interests of what Buchanan would call European-Americans, in terms of defending the Christian foundations of the U.S., is a grievous sin to the liberals. This is what the blacklisting of Buchanan really means. It is telling that Scarborough apparently felt compelled to denounce Buchanan’s views while lamenting his leaving the MSNBC “family.”

Another difference is that the buffoonish Sharpton has the intellectual depth of a saucer, while Buchanan has a deep knowledge of history. Buchanan has the intellectual ammunition to argue and win his arguments. Taking Buchanan to task for some of his comments should not mean conservatives have to fall into the trap of reading him out of the media and the conservative movement.

Conservatives should be able to disagree with his views and conclusions, without using the language of the left to vilify him.

It is disappointing to see Andrew Breitbart’s usually excellent BigJournalism.com linking to an article that calls Buchanan an anti-Semite. The link was to a Pajamas Media article claiming Buchanan was fired for the wrong reason, implying that he should have been fired for a different reason. But firing is not the proper response for someone who was writing conservative editorials at an early age and taking on the liberal media when the writers at Pajamas Media were truly in their pajamas—and diapers. It seems like the Media Matters mentality exists on the right as well.

Sean Hannity is to be commended for giving Buchanan a chance on his Fox News program to defend himself and explain the reasons why he was fired. The trouble for Hannity is that Buchanan followed Glenn Beck out the door, as a result of the same kind of campaign waged by the same forces.

To be fair, Hannity should not condemn one ouster without examining the other. However, we know that he would be risking his job if he seriously investigated on the air why Fox buckled under to pressure from George Soros by getting rid of Beck. This story goes beyond political pressure to threats against Glenn Beck’s personnel, as we have already revealed and documented. The situation at Fox News, which hired feminist commentators Jehmu Greene and Sally Kohn to keep Media Matters at bay, is actually much worse than the sacking of Buchanan.

The bleak media landscape, as the presidential campaign goes forward, shows Fox News moving to the left and MSNBC moving further to the left.

Some viewers have objected to the cancellation of Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show on the Fox Business Network. These complaints should be taken seriously. But his program never had the high ratings that Beck’s show did on the Fox News Channel. What’s more, Napolitano is not completely gone from the channel; he remains as a commentator on Fox News.

As for Joe Scarborough, he realizes that if he goes too far to the right he will meet the same fate as Buchanan. CPAC should repel his “invasion” the next time he tries to breach the gates. A serious conservative when he was elected to Congress, I worked with his staff on a bill to get the U.S. out of the United Nations. But today he is just a “token conservative” who isn’t that conservative at a cable channel that doesn’t believe in free speech and true diversity.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted atcliff.kincaid@aim.org.

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Even Santorum’s Backers Stunned By His Colorado Victory

by Admin on February 8, 2012 in Colorado, Rick Santorum, Tea Party, Tom Tancredo with No comments

DENVER (CBS4) – Rick Santorum hopes to capitalize on his Colorado victory. He took 40 percent of the vote in Tuesday night’s caucus.

Mitt Romney finished with 35 percent and Newt Gingrich ran a distant third.

Based on the polls going into the caucus, Santorum’s showing in Colorado was quite a surprise. It was definitely a disappointing night for Romney, but not quite disastrous.

While Santorum won rural counties such as El Paso, Teller, Larimer and Weld. They trend conservative regardless of the candidate. It’s the swing counties that are telling for November. Romney won counties that included battlegrounds such as Arapahoe and Jefferson.

Still, in a race that continues to have one unexpected twist after another, it was the wildest night yet. Even Santorum’s backers were stunned by his Colorado victory.

“I kept saying, ‘I think we’re going to come in a strong second here in Colorado,’ you know, hoping. And I was going to call that a win,” former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo said.

Tancredo says Santorum did what Romney couldn’t — appeal to the hardcore conservatives in the state — the type that turns out for caucuses. It’s a group that’s membership has changed since the last time Romney was on a ballot in Colorado.

The Tea Party has emerged since 2008, when ironically Romney was the conservative in the race.

Former Colorado Republican Party Chair Dick Wadhams says Romney underestimated their pull.

“I think Colorado Republicans sent a clear message to Mitt Romney last night that they want more of Rick Santorum in candidacy,” Wadhams said. “I don’t think it was an outright rejection of Mitt Romney.”

Romney may have also miscalculated the impact of being the “establishment” candidate in a state that doesn’t like to be told who to vote for.

“You have to be very judicious in applying the endorsements,” longtime Repulican political consultant Walt Klein said.

Klein said in contrast Santorum was seen as the “grassroots” candidate.

“He seemed to be every place, every day. He hit all the right bastions,” Klein said.

The question now is if he can capitalize on it. As momentum shifts, so do the attacks.

“We’ll see to what extent he can withstand the onslaught of negative advertising that will come,” Tancredo said.

After all, Romney has the organization and the bank account and his loss wasn’t a death blow. In fact, the longer Santorum’s candidacy stays alive the easier for Romney to conquer and divide.

“Mitt Romney’s going to be a better nominee having to fight for this nomination,” Wadhams said.

While Romney needs the conservative base in the counties where Santorum won, every Republican CBS4 Political Specialist Shaun Boyd talked to says if he’s the nominee they will fall in line behind him. Their goal is to beat President Obama.

Still, it’s certainly a wake-up call for Romney.

Santorum’s campaign received more than $250,000 in donations since Tuesday night’s sweep.

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Gingrich in 2009: We need a must-carry law on health insurance

by Admin on January 30, 2012 in Marxism, Newt Gingrich, Obamacare, RINO's, Romneycare, Socialism with No comments

Via: Hot Air

Morgen and John at Verum Serum dug up this nugget, and not from 15 years ago when the Heritage Foundation had its brief and ill-advised fling with individual health-insurance mandates at the federal level. This comes from a May 2009 conference call hosted by Newt Gingrich on the subject of health-care reform as ObamaCare had just begun its tortured path through Congress. In this clip, Gingrich specifically calls for individual “must carry” mandates, and even notes that the insurance companies agreed that such a law would make “must issue” a better deal for them:

The most relevant part comes at the 28-second mark in this clip:

The real foundation, the most important part of this, is individual rights, responsibilities, and expectations of behavior. … We believe that there should be must-carry, that everybody should have health insurance, or if you’re an absolute libertarian, we would allow you to post a bond, but we would not allow people to be “free riders” failing to insure themselves and then showing up in the emergency room with no means of payment.  If you have must carry, then the insurance companies have told us that we can have must-issue, and you will therefore have a system in which you don’t have to worry about cherry-picking and maneuvering. … This is the kind of general model we will be advocating.

Frankly, that sounds like what Mitt Romney argued in Massachusetts, and it’s almost exactly what Barack Obama argued when pushing ObamaCare.  The only exception would have come for “absolute libertarians,” and in 2008, put the price of that bond at $100,000 – $150,000 — far out of the reach of most Americans.   This makes sense, of course, because the wealthy are quite unlikely to be “free riders” anyway, but the mechanism that Gingrich backed even as ObamaCare was rolling out is essentially the same as Congress passed less than a year later, and it would have trapped the entire middle and working classes.

Gingrich has since said he was wrong about the individual mandate, and challenges Romney to do the same on the campaign trail — even though he told NBC in May of last year that he wouldn’t use the mandate against Romney because of his previous support.  But his admissions of error tend to leave people with the impression that he repented of this a few years earlier, when Gingrich had backed forms of a mandate up until getting into the race (see above link).  Morgen sums up:

Not only did Gingrich make the “conservative” argument for the mandate in dealing with the free rider problem, he also advanced a favorite argument of the left. Which is that the only way insurers could be required to offer coverage to everyone regardless of their health status (“must issue”), was to require everyone to carry insurance. This was ultimately the argument which convinced none other than Barack Obama, who remember, opposed an individual mandate during the Democrat primary campaign in 2008.

Romney is arguably even more compromised on ObamaCare than Gingrich, but it’s a much closer call in my opinion than some seem to believe.

I think either man would act to rescind ObamaCare if elected; the pressure from Republicans would be too much to bear, and in any case, the past two election cycles have proven the mandates to be politically toxic.  But if one is looking for daylight between the two on this topic, they’d be hard pressed to find it.

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FREEDOMWORKS PRESIDENT WANTS NEW GOP CANDIDATE: TEA PARTY HASN‘T ’COALESCED’ AROUND GINGRICH

by Admin on January 30, 2012 in Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, RINO's, Tea Party with 1 Comment

Via: The Blaze

On Tuesday’s episode of “Real News From The Blaze,” special guest Matt Kibbe, president of the conservative organization FreedomWorks, along with the panel, discussed why Newt Gingrich is not the Tea Party candidate for 2012.

Blaze host S.E. Cupp shared her observation that the Tea Party wants a small government outsider and thus could never be satisfied with Gingrich, a “big government Republican.”

“But where are they going to go?” asks Kibbe, suggesting that panel members are holding the Tea Party and its ideal candidate “to standard no one can be held to.”

“I don’t think the Tea Party has coalesced around Newt Gingrich,” Kibbe said, speculating that there could even be a brokered convention with an outside candidate being chosen to run.

“I would love to find someone outside of the current field,” he added.

When asked who might shine as an ideal presidential candidate with core Tea Party values, Kibbe offered Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio and Tim Scott but ceded that they’re all “too green” to run for president. Kibbe did agree that Jeb Bush could also be a good choice, underscoring a National Review post out Tuesday suggesting that the “charismatic governor” could “save the Republican party.”

Watch Kibbe and the panel discuss a Tea Party candidate below:

From Artur Davis at NRO who posits that there is a “feasibility around the idea” of a Jeb Bush run that before “seemed unthinkable.” He writes:

To be sure, the Jeb scenario will need more instability in order to flourish. The likeliest path involves Gingrich’s momentum carrying him through Florida; the February races in Arizona and Michigan dividing between Romney and Gingrich; Romney rebounding in March in moderate-leaning midwestern states such as Illinois and Wisconsin; Gingrich winning easily in the Deep South on Super Tuesday and Texas in early April, with Romney proving equally strong in New York and the rest of the Atlantic coastline, while states like Ohio and Indiana fail to resolve the split.

Imagine that California’s ultimate showdown leaves Gingrich with the slightest of edges, but with Romney remaining viable and in possession of a broader geographic base, far more internal support from GOP leadership, and a substantial chunk of delegates. To stop Gingrich, Romney might have no practical choice but to offer to throw his support to Bush, whose popularity would also implode Gingrich’s slim plurality.

Not one bit of it is implausible.

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For Santorum

by Admin on January 30, 2012 in GOP Primary Election, Michelle Malkin, Rick Santorum with No comments

Via: MichelleMalkin.com, By Michelle Malkin

Rick Santorum opposed TARP.

He didn’t cave when Chicken Littles in Washington invoked a manufactured crisis in 2008. He didn’t follow the pro-bailout GOP crowd — including Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich — and he didn’t have to obfuscate or rationalize his position then or now, like Rick Perry and Herman Cain did. He also opposed the auto bailout, Freddie and Fannie bailout, and porkulus bills.

Santorum opposed individual health care mandates — clearly and forcefully — as far back as his 1994 U.S. Senate run. He has launched the most cogent, forceful fusillade against both Romney and Gingrich for their muddied, pro-individual health care mandate waters.

He voted against cap and trade in 2003, voted yes to drilling in ANWR, and unlike Romney and Gingrich, Santorum has never dabbled with eco-radicals like John Holdren, Al Gore and Nancy Pelosi. He hasn’t written any “Contracts with the Earth.”

Santorum is strong on border security, national security, and defense. Mitt the Flip-Flopper and Open Borders-Pandering Newt have been far less trustworthy on immigration enforcement.

Santorum is an eloquent spokesperson for the culture of life. He has been savaged and ridiculed by leftist elites for upholding traditional family values — not just in word, but in deed.

He won Iowa through hard work and competent campaign management. Santorum has improved in every GOP debate and gave his strongest performance last week in Florida, wherein he both dismantled Romneycare and popped the Newt bubble by directly challenging the front-runners’ character and candor without resorting to their petty tactics.

He rose above the fray by sticking to issues.

Most commendably, he refused to join Gingrich and Perry in indulging in the contemptible Occupier rhetoric against Romney. Character and honor matter. Santorum has it.

Of course, Santorum is not perfect. As I’ve said all along, every election cycle is a Pageant of the Imperfects. He lost his Senate re-election bid in 2006, an abysmal year for conservatives. He was a go-along, get-along Big Government Republican in the Bush era. He supported No Child Left Behind, the prescription drug benefit entitlement, steel tariffs, and earmarks and outraged us movement conservatives by endorsing RINO Arlen Specter over stalwart conservative Pat Toomey.

I have no illusions about Rick Santorum. I wish he were as rock-solid on core economic issues as Ron Paul.

And I wish Ron Paul was not the far-out, Alex Jones-panderer on foreign policy, defense, and national security that he is.

If Ron Paul talked more like his son, Rand Paul, about the need for common-sense profiling of jihadists at our State Department consular offices overseas and if he talked more about the need for strengthened visa screening and airport security scrutiny of international flight manifests, I might have more than a kernel of confidence that he would take post-9/11 precautions to guard against jihadi threats and protect us from our enemies foreign and domestic. But he doesn’t, so I can’t support Ron Paul.

Mitt Romney has the backing of many solid conservatives whom I will always hold in high esteem — including Kansas Secretary of State and immigration enforcement stalwart Kris Kobach, former U.N. ambassacor John Bolton, and GOP Govs. Nikki Haley and Bob McDonnell. With such conservative advisers in his camp, Romney would be better than Obama. And a GOP Congress with a staunch Tea Party-backed contingent of fresh-blood leaders in the House and Senate will help keep any GOP president in line. Romney’s private-sector experience and achievements are the best things he’s got going. Only recently has he risen to defend himself effectively. But between his health care debacle, eco-nitwittery, and expedient and unconvincing political metamorphosis, Mitt Romney had way too much ideological baggage for me in 2008 to earn an endorsement — and it still hasn’t changed for me in 2012.

Then there’s Newt, who has long made a career out of trashing progressive Saul Alinsky while employing his tactics at every turn. I’ve been making this point for years and have chronicled his dalliances with leftists as long as anyone in the conservative blogosphere.

Many grass-roots conservatives were awakened to Newt’s double-talk and double-dealing during the NY-23 race. Inconvenient truth: Newt’s transgressions are not from decades ago. It’s not ancient history. It’s here and now. Readers of this blog know the truth: It’s not just “the GOP establishment” that’s repulsed by Gingrich’s combination of moral baggage and K Street/Beltway culture of corruption. It’s the very grass-roots that Gingrich’s cheerleaders purport to represent.

Remember October 2009?

From reader Barnaby, who sent back his crossed-out Republican solicitation forms with a “NO RINOS” sticky note for Newt Gingrich:

Remember the rebuke in Dubuque? May 11, 2011:

Guy: Speaker Gingrich, what you just did to Paul Ryan is unforgivable.
Gingrich: I didn’t do anything to Paul Ryan!
Guy: Yes, you did. You undercut him and his allies in the house.
Gingrich: No, I…
Guy: You’re an embarrassment to our party.
Gingrich: I’m sorry you feel that way.
Guy: Why don’t you get out before you make a bigger fool of yourself.

Lest we forget, this election is not about choosing a showboat candidate to run against John King or Juan Williams or Wolf Blitzer.

It’s not about “raging against” some arbitrarily defined GOP “machine.”

For many grass-roots conservatives across the country, Romney and Gingrich are the machine.

And at this point in the game, Rick Santorum represents the most conservative candidate still standing who can articulate both fiscal and social conservative values — and live them.

***

Side note: Unlike many bloggers and pundits weighing in on GOP 2012, I have zero connections to any of the final four GOP candidates’ campaigns. I have neither received a single penny from, nor donated a single penny, to any of their campaigns.

have not served as any kind of consultant or adviser to any of the campaigns. I have not written any speeches or talking points or briefing papers for any of their campaigns. I have not organized any blogger calls or social media efforts for any of their campaigns. I have not spoken to Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich since interviewing them for Hot Air at CPAC in 2006, and as far as I can recall, I have not communicated directly with either Santorum or Paul. My first and only contact with Santorum’s campaign came last week when a spokesman called to assure me that Santorum was not withdrawing from the Florida primary or the race in general and was in it for the long haul.

So much for my “establishment” credentials, eh?

***
Santorum is headed to Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, and Nevada.

“The Rick Santorum for President Campaign will expand nationally this week with campaign stops in Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, and Nevada in the coming days,” a spokesman MAtt Beynon said in a statement.

Santorum is slated to make several stops in battleground states over the next few days, but did not appear to be heading back to Florida, where Republicans go to the polls on Tuesday.

Santorum is expected be in Las Vegas, Nevada on Tuesday when the Florida results are known.

After winning Iowa — the first state to chose which Republican they want to face Obama in November — Santorum’s campaign has struggled to catch fire.

In Florida — a winner-takes-all race — the former senator has not appeared much and is barely avoiding a vote share in single digits according to polls, putting him in third place behing Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.

Nevada will vote just four days after Florida, while Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri all vote on February 7th.
Santorum had put campaigning in Florida on hold Sunday, as his daughter, Bella, was hospitalized just days before a key primary vote.

Two days before Florida’s winner-takes-all primary, Santorum spent the day in Pennsylvania, where his three year-old was admitted to a Philadelphia children’s hospital.

***

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Best Article On Newt – By “Morning Joe”

by Tom Tancredo on January 29, 2012 in Newt Gingrich, RINO's, Tom Tancredo with 2 Comments

By Tom Tancredo

English: Al Gore and Newt Gingrich applaud to ...

Speaker, Newt Gingrich

I was elected to Congress in 1998 and within a few days thereafter received the perfunctory call from the Speaker to congratulate me.  The Speaker was Newt Gingrich. I thanked him for the call and praised him for his role in the “revolution.” He then said another purpose of the call was to make sure I could count on his vote for Speaker when the House convened in January. I swallowed hard and said I would not be able commit to him.  He angrily asked,”Why not?” I said it was because we had lost seats in the elections following his taking the reins while growing government at the same rate as the Dems.  I told him I felt he had let the revolution fizzle out. He said that I really didn’t have the perspective needed to legitimately criticize him.  I agreed that I was observing from afar but that he asked me a simple question as to whether or not he could count on my vote and the honest answer to that was no.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to face that dilemma because when he finished counting his votes for reelection he was far short of a majority. He announced therefore, that he would drop out of the race and resign from Congress. I am not sure, but I think that is the first time a Speaker has been ousted from that position by his own caucus.

I found the following account by Joe Scarborough of the events leading up to Newt’s demise as Speaker to be compelling reading.

Newt and his supporters are spinning all criticism of him as driven by party moderates and the Republican establishment.  Perhaps Scarborough can be tagged with that.  I cannot!

The Newt I know

By: Joe Scarborough
January 27, 2012 01:05 PM EST
Yeah, yeah. I know. Newt Gingrich had a lousy week and will probably lose the Florida primary on Tuesday. But for those tempted to once again predict the speedy collapse of his campaign, consider yourselves forewarned. I’ve known this guy long enough to realize that the only three species destined to survive a nuclear holocaust will be cockroaches, Cher and Newton Leroy Gingrich. I first met Gingrich 17 years ago at a Destin, Fla., fundraiser held in my honor a few weeks after Newt declared that I was too conservative to win the general election. But after I won the primary against the moderate woman he anointed, there he was in Florida looking supremely bored and a little put out that he was having to sit through another politician’s speech.
In the ensuing years, I found the mercurial maverick to be inspiring and maddening, disciplined and self-indulgent, forward thinking and short-sighted, gifted and dumb — sometimes all within the same hour. If, as Shakespeare wrote, what’s past is prologue — and it often is — then Gingrich’s political history is particularly relevant now. It’s a history I know well because I was there. And what I saw at the revolution has concerned me since I left Washington.

Many who have heard my harsh assessments of Gingrich over the past year have assumed that I feel a personal animus toward my former colleague. That’s just not true. That fact is that I remain awestruck that Newt envisioned a Republican majority when his closest allies thought he was crazy. Even an eternal optimist like me laughed at the “Think Majority” sign hanging over the NRCC reception area in early 1994.

But Newt was right and we were wrong. The Gingrich Revolution overtook Washington (with a huge assist from Bill Clinton’s overreaching agenda) and good things followed. Within a few years, Congress passed the first balanced budget in a generation, welfare reform, tax cuts and meaningful congressional changes.

If Newt’s story ended there, I might have a Gingrich 2012 sign in my front yard. But unfortunately, it does not.

Three years into his speakership, the man who helped draft the Contract With America began trying to undo some of that document’s key provisions. The government shutdown had badly damaged the speaker’s brand and he went to work trying to raise his 27 percent approval rating.

In April 1997, Gingrich told The New York Times he was ready to be a kinder and gentler Republican by negotiating away the very tax cuts that he had once called “the crown jewels of the contract.” Soon, conservatives were being pressured to vote for big spending appropriations bills. In his final speech from the floor of Congress, Newt Gingrich lashed out wildly at the same freshmen who had made him speaker — mocking us as cannibals who made up “the perfectionist caucus.”

It was the last time Newt would attack the most conservative members of his caucus from the lofty perch as speaker. In 1997, ten of my fellow classmates had led a coup attempt against Gingrich, shutting down the House over the speaker’s efforts to violate the Contract with America by swelling the number of committee staff members.

Conservative stalwarts like Steve Largent, Tom Coburn and Matt Salmon joined me and seven others to demand a cut in spending and a promise to hold firm on tax cuts.

Newt did not take the rebellion lying down. He immediately summoned the sergeant of arms to drag the 11 rebels down to a Republican caucus meeting in the bowels of the Capitol basement, where Newt lined us up in front of a packed room of seething House members who were now missing the first day of their Easter recess because of our insurgency. Gingrich then began screaming and demanded that the 11 of us account for our behavior.

He then taught me a political lesson I will always remember: Never willingly hand the microphone over to your enemies. Especially when the first rebel to speak was elected to the NFL Hall of Fame and one of People Magazine’s Most Beautiful Men Alive.

As Steve Largent grabbed the microphone, the crowd of GOP members was still shouting insults. But by the time he stood behind the podium, even our most hostile opponents grew quiet.

Steve spoke softly about how he signed a contract with the Seattle Seahawks and remembered shaking the hand of the team’s owner after the deal was done. A few years later, the NFL Players Association went on strike. But Largent told the mob, who were now transfixed, that he crossed those picket lines because he signed a contract and gave his word. Largent told the group that a few years later, the NFL players went on strike a second time and he was once again one of the few NFL players to keep reporting for work. For Steve, it was a matter of principle.

The beautiful NFL Hall of Famer then quietly moved in for the kill.

Turning to the Speaker, who a year earlier had been named Time Magazine’s person of the year, Largent said, “Newt, you were the one who drafted the contract and then told us to sign it. Now, you’re the one pressuring us to break it. But Newt, if I wasn’t intimidated by the thought of 250 pound linebackers who wanted to kill me every time I crossed the field, why would I be intimidated by you?”

And with that, the speakership of Newt Gingrich was over. A year later, he would be driven from power and sent into a political wilderness from which he emerged 14 years later on a Saturday night in South Carolina.

Gingrich’s precipitous fall from power was the result of arrogance, self-satisfaction and a fatal tendency to flit from issue to issue — and even from core conviction to core conviction — in the seeming belief that if he spoke well enough (and used as many adverbs as possible), no one would notice that he was doing something he had equally eloquently (and equally adverbially) opposed before.

Let’s be clear: Gingrich is an important figure. Regardless of what happens in Florida and beyond, he will be remembered as the man who brought the Reagan Revolution to Congress. Yet it will also be recorded that Newt compared the Great Reagan with Neville Chamberlain, dismissed Reaganomics as flawed and called Reagan’s approach to the Soviet Union an utter failure a few years before the U.S.S.R. was relegated to the dustbin of history.

These unpleasant facts do not stop Newt from trying to embrace the same policies he once denounced (one wonders if he even remembers the contradictions at this point), but that’s what makes my former colleague so fascinating. And so troubling.

A Gingrich campaign is always a high wire act without the net and sometimes, the main actor in this manic routine actually makes it to the other side. But after his listless march through the Sunshine State, even I wonder how many more performances remain.

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ON SHARIA FINANCE, BLANKIES AND AXE BODY SPRAY

by Admin on January 28, 2012 in Agriculture, CAIR, Creeping Communism, Creeping Sharia, Islamization of America, Islamo-Fascism, Marxism, Sharia Law with 1 Comment
Via: Barnhardt.biz, By Ann Barnhardt
Writing about Sharia finance is oddly refreshing. Why? Because it is a chance to point out the abject stupidity – and guys, we’re talking full-on drooling imbecility here – of islam without anyone getting their head sawed off with a dull Ginsu-II or a child getting raped. Sharia finance is so monumentally stupid that it is actually hysterically funny. Have a few beers around a campfire and I could get you laughing so hard your ribs would ache.
English: Type of contracts at sharia law

Sharia finance CLAIMS to be lending without interest, because everyone knows that interest is all a sinister plot hatched by the JOOOOOOZ to keep down the white man. Wait. Keep down the black man. Wait, no. I’m getting so confused. Um, it definitely has something to do with the JOOOOOOZ, and I know this because all of the Ron Paul supporters tell me so. They also tell me that the World Trade Center was brought down by cold fusion-powered government tractor beams. They also tell me that the earthquake we had here in Colorado last year was actually the government (or was it the JOOOOOOOZ?) destroying the secret underground mega-city west of Trinidad, CO (Middle Earth is REALZ, yo!) with nuclear weapons, and that Ron Paul actually is the best friend and savior of the JOOOOOOOZ and if I weren’t such a Jew-loving, Zionist c*** I would see that. My email box is proof that truth is stranger than fiction, and that you really, truly can not make this stuff up. But I digress.

So the entire premise of Sharia finance is that there is NO INTEREST. If you borrow money, it is at zero percent, because the paying of interest is “haram”, which means “forbidden”, according to Sharia law. Got it? Good. Now, let me walk you through the reality of Sharia finance, and I warn you, don’t drink while you’re reading this, because if you do, you stand a good chance of spewing your Dr. Pepper out your nose, and I won’t be responsible for that.

Let’s say a person buys a $150,000 home on a 15 year mortgage at 5%. Purely for the sake of simplicity, let’s just say zero down. The amortization table shows that over those 15 years, or 180 months, at 5% interest, the monthly payment would be $1186.19 and that the total interest expense paid over the life of the mortgage would be $63,514.28. So, principal plus interest would be $213,514.28 for the $150,000 property.

Now here is an “interest-free” Sharia loan scenario. And bear in mind that I am dead serious here. I’m not making this up.

A musloid walks in to a Sharia-compliant lender and tells them that they want to buy a $150,000 property on a 15 year term. The Sharia-compliant lender then looks up what the going INTEREST RATE is. (Uh, Houston, we have a problem.) In our example, it is 5% on a 15 year mortgage. He then calculates the amortization table on a 15 year loan on $150,000 at 5%. (Uh, Houston, we’ve had some sort of major malfunction here.) He sees that the total interest expense would be $63,514.28. So, the Sharia-compliant lender then offers to buy the property at $150,000 and immediately sell it to the customer for . . . $213,514.28. The customer then sets up a note to repay the $213,514.28 in 180 equal monthly payments of $1186.19 at “zero percent”, because $213,514.28 divided by 180 is $1186.19. Voila! Zero interest!

That’s it. I’m not kidding. I’m not making this up. If I was going to make something up, I would make something up that wasn’t totally, completely, laughably stupid.

Um, soooooo, tell me Mister Musloid, what EXACTLY is the $63,514.28 markup? Uh, isn’t that . . . interest? How was that amount calculated? Uh, didn’t you ping the interest rate market to come up with that number? Yes.

Aren’t you paying the lender for the use of his money over the 15 year term? Yes.

Wouldn’t TRUE zero-interest lending mean that you paid a total of $150,000 for the property, and that your monthly payment would therefore be $150,000 divided by 180 months, or $833.33 per month? Yes.

And if you did a 30 year loan at true zero interest, your monthly payment would be $150,000 divided by 360, or $416.66 per month? Yes. THAT would be zero interest. Sharia finance is “zero interest” about as much as I am a bottle of 1964 Chateau Latour.

Over the Christmas holiday, I had the occasion to be around a two year old while traveling. There was a blanket nearby, and we inevitably fell into the old game of “hide under the blanket”. The toddler would pull the blanket over their head right in front of me, and then I would say, “Hey, where did she go? She was here just a minute ago. She just disappeared!” And then the toddler would pull the blanket off of her head and yell “HERE I AM!” and I would act like I had just witnessed some sort of miraculous manipulation of the fabric of space-time – probably having to do with a secret government cold fusion-powered tractor beam. You know the game. And you also know that toddlers at between the ages of three and four become self-aware, and possess enough cognitive sophistication to be able to perceive and extrapolate how OTHERS perceive THEM. And as soon as that intellectual benchmark is reached, the “hide under the blanket game” no longer works, because the child KNOWS YOU CAN SEE THEM.

This is pretty much the dynamic we are dealing with vis-à-vis the musloids. These people are intellectually and cognitively stunted due to 1400 years of inbreeding. As a result of this, they actually think that this Sharia finance “work around” is somehow valid or legit – AND THAT WE CAN’T SEE IT. They think that we non-musloids look at this and say, “My goodness! Yes . . . yes. That truly is a zero interest mortgage! Why didn’t we think of that?!”

The sad thing is that the politically correct morons who infest our culture think that it is somehow “tolerant” or “promoting diversity” to go along with the musloids and their intellectual retardation. And so, all of the megabanks are furiously scrambling to set up “Sharia-compliant” financial products, when the only appropriate response to such absurdity would be something along the lines of, “DO YOU THINK THAT I’M STUPID? GET THE HELL OUT OF MY OFFICE, AND TAKE YOUR BRAIN-DAMAGED NONSENSE WITH YOU. NOW. I’M BUSY.”

Finally, just a word about this in terms of the faux-religious con of islam. Have you noticed that musloids are constantly trying to cheat, deceive, and concoct “work-arounds” of ol’ allah? Sharia finance is merely trying to come up with a childish legalistic way to claim that they aren’t paying interest – but they obviously are. Islam also teaches that men can sin and do whatever they please on Mondays and Thursdays, because these are the two days of the week that allah is “inventorying the deeds of men”, and thus allah “is busy and isn’t watching you.”

I’m telling you, the stupid is STRONG with these people. What the hell kind of religion is built upon screwing over the diety? Oh, yeah – a “religion” that isn’t a religion at all, but a stupid, evil totalitarian political cult that uses faux-religious myths and motifs to control its cognitively damaged slaves. THAT kind of “religion”.

Guys, it is one thing to play “hide under the blankie” with a two year old. It is quite another to play that game with a 50 year old man wanting to buy real estate who smells of goat and Axe Body Spray, and also wants to kill you and take over your country.

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Sarah Palin: Cannibals in GOP Establishment Employ Tactics of the Left

by Admin on January 28, 2012 in GOP, GOP Primary Election, Political Propaganda, RINO's, Sarah Palin with 1 Comment

 Via: The Right Scoop

Read to the end on this one. This is Sarah Palin doing what she does best, ripping into the establishment:

We have witnessed something very disturbing this week. The Republican establishment which fought Ronald Reagan in the 1970s and which continues to fight the grassroots Tea Party movement today has adopted the tactics of the left in using the media and the politics of personal destruction to attack an opponent.

We will look back on this week and realize that something changed. I have given numerous interviews wherein I espoused the benefits of thorough vetting during aggressive contested primary elections, but this week’s tactics aren’t what I meant. Those who claim allegiance to Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment should stop and think about where we are today.

Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, the fathers of the modern conservative movement, would be ashamed of us in this primary. Let me make clear that I have no problem with the routine rough and tumble of a heated campaign. As I said at the first Tea Party convention two years ago, I am in favor of contested primaries and healthy, pointed debate. They help focus candidates and the electorate. I have fought in tough and heated contested primaries myself. But what we have seen in Florida this week is beyond the pale. It was unprecedented in GOP primaries. I’ve seen it before – heck, I lived it before – but not in a GOP primary race.

I am sadly too familiar with these tactics because they were used against the GOP ticket in 2008. The left seeks to single someone out and destroy his or her record and reputation and family using the media as a channel to dump handpicked and half-baked campaign opposition research on the public. The difference in 2008 was that I was largely unknown to the American public, so they had no way of differentiating between the lies and the truth. All of it came at them at once as “facts” about me. But Newt Gingrich is known to us – both the good and the bad.

We know that Newt fought in the trenches during the Reagan Revolution. As Rush Limbaugh pointed out, Newt was among a handful of Republican Congressman who would regularly take to the House floor to defend Reagan at a time when conservatives didn’t have Fox News or talk radio or conservative blogs to give any balance to the liberal mainstream media. Newt actually came at Reagan’s administration “from the right” to remind Americans that freer markets and tougher national defense would win our future. But this week a few handpicked and selectively edited comments which Newt made during his 40-year career were used to claim that Newt was somehow anti-Reagan, and isn’t conservative enough to go against the accepted moderate in the primary race. (I know, it makes no sense, and the GOP establishment hopes you won’t stop and think about this nonsense. Mark Levin and others have shown the ridiculousness of this.)

To add insult to injury, this “anti-Reagan” claim was made by a candidate who admitted to not even supporting or voting for Reagan. He actually was against the Reagan movement, donated to liberal candidates, and said he didn’t want to go back to the Reagan days. You can’t change history. We know that Newt Gingrich brought the Reagan Revolution into the 1990s. We know it because none other than Nancy Reagan herself announced this when she presented Newt with an award, telling us, “The dramatic movement of 1995 is an outgrowth of a much earlier crusade that goes back half a century.  Barry Goldwater handed the torch to Ronnie, and in turn Ronnie turned that torch over to Newt and the Republican members of Congress to keep that dream alive.” As Rush and others pointed out, if Nancy Reagan had ever thought that Newt was in any way an opponent of her beloved husband, she would never have even appeared on a stage with him, let alone presented him with an award and said such kind things about him. Nor would Reagan’s son, Michael Reagan, have chosen to endorse Newt in this primary race. There are no two greater keepers of the Reagan legacy than Nancy and Michael Reagan. What we saw with this ridiculous opposition dump on Newt was nothing short of Stanlin-esque re-writing of history. It was Alinsky tactics at their worst.

But this whole thing isn’t really about Newt Gingrich vs. Mitt Romney. It is about the GOP establishment vs. the Tea Party grassroots and independent Americans who are sick of the politics of personal destruction used now by both parties’ operatives with a complicit media egging it on. In fact, the establishment has been just as dismissive of Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. Newt is an imperfect vessel for Tea Party support, but in South Carolina the Tea Party chose to get behind him instead of the old guard’s choice. In response, the GOP establishment voices denounced South Carolinian voters with the same vitriol we usually see from the left when they spew hatred at everyday Americans “bitterly clinging” to their faith and their Second Amendment rights.

The Tea Party was once again told to sit down and shut up and listen to the “wisdom” of their betters. We were reminded of the litany of Tea Party endorsed candidates in 2010 that didn’t win. Well, here’s a little newsflash to the establishment: without the Tea Party there would have been no historic 2010 victory at all.

I spoke up before the South Carolina primary to urge voters there to keep this primary going because I have great concern about the GOP establishment trying to anoint a candidate without the blessing of the grassroots and all the needed energy and resources we as commonsense constitutional conservatives could bring to the general election in order to defeat President Obama.

Now, I respect Governor Romney and his success. But there are serious concerns about his record and whether as a politician he consistently applied conservative principles and how this impacts the agenda moving forward. The questions need answers now. That is why this primary should not be rushed to an end. We need to vet this. Pundits in the Beltway are gleefully proclaiming that this primary race is over after Florida, despite 46 states still not having chimed in. Well, perhaps it’s possible that it will come to a speedy end in just four days; but with these questions left unanswered, it will not have come to a satisfactory conclusion. Without this necessary vetting process, the unanswered question of Governor Romney’s conservative bona fides and the unanswered and false attacks on Newt Gingrich will hang in the air to demoralize many in the electorate.

The Tea Party grassroots will certainly feel disenfranchised and disenchanted with the perceived orchestrated outcome from self-proclaimed movers and shakers trying to sew this all up. And, trust me, during the general election, Governor Romney’s statements and record in the private sector will be relentlessly parsed over by the opposition in excruciating detail to frighten off swing voters. This is why we need a fair primary that is not prematurely cut short by the GOP establishment using Alinsky tactics to kneecap Governor Romney’s chief rival.

As I said in my speech in Iowa last September, the challenge of this election is not simply to replace President Obama. The real challenge is who and what we will replace him with. It’s not enough to just change up the uniform. If we don’t change the team and the game plan, we won’t save our country. We truly need sudden and relentless reform in Washington to defend our republic, though it’s becoming clearer that the old guard wants anything but that. That is why we should all be concerned by the tactics employed by the establishment this week. We will not save our country by becoming like the left. And I question whether the GOP establishment would ever employ the same harsh tactics they used on Newt against Obama. I didn’t see it in 2008. Many of these same characters sat on their thumbs in ‘08 and let Obama escape unvetted. Oddly, they’re now using every available microscope and endoscope – along with rewriting history – in attempts to character assassinate anyone challenging their chosen one in their own party’s primary. So, one must ask, who are they really running against?

- Sarah Palin

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